Stage 5 Cave (Arranger's Cut Edition??) BEGINNING When I try to transcribe a piece, I always give it a full listen first. I listen to the instruments in the piece, the major melodic sections (i.e A section, B section, A repeated), the beats per measure. This piece for example has: -2 bar intro -2 bar A -2 bar B -2 bar A -2 bar B' (b "prime", a variation) -4 bar C -4 bar C (repeated) -4 bar D section -Repeat everything. Then I figure out the tempo and key with an online metronome and piano. This piece is in 4/4 and the tempo is 128 bpm. BASS The easiest thing to do next is to figure out the first few measures of the base line. This piece's bass line was really easy to hear. All you have to do is match the note you are hearing in the bass to a note on the piano. In this case, the bass note on measure 3 is a D. Then you can distinctly hear the next note in measure 3 as an A. This gives us the distinct "I-V-I-V" (1-5-1-5) sound that basses usually play. That's mostly all there is to hearing a bass line. It is important to start with the bass to have a tonal foundation for the piece. MELODY The melody is considerably more difficult, because there can be challenging rhythms, weird harmonies and dissonances, etc. This piece thankfully has a lot of "chromaticism". I think the easiest notes to hear in the piece are the D, C#, A, and A# because they are right next to each other. You can see that they are used a lot in measures 3-5, 12 and 14 etc... I had to restart the piece about 100-150 times just to get the melody in my head. Once it is in your head, you can play it on the piano and see what the notes are. A NOTE ON RHYTHM This piece has a lot of 16th notes, which look scary, but aren't that bad. The easiest way to hear the rhythm is to take the 4 beats in a measure and divide them into 4. So in measure 11, you have 1234 1234 1234 1234. 16th notes divided by 4 "big" beats. In measure 5, the same idea is there, but not all 16th notes are used. Instead you have: 1234 1(2)34 123(4) 1234 The notes in () are not sounded, but counted. So if you have tricky rhythms, you have to think about it in this way.